Interpreting the Moving Image

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by Noel Carroll

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published April 1998, 370 pages, paper

ISBN 0521589703

Interpreting the Moving Image is a collection of essays by one of the most astute critics of cinema at work today. This volume provides a close analysis of major films of both the narrative and the avant-garde traditions. Written in accessible and engaging language, it also serves as a guide to such classics as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Citizen Kane, as well as the art of cinema in the postmodern era.

Review

With the recent publication of The Philosophy of Mass Art and this new publication of essays on film, Noël Carroll is living up to Tom Gunning's estimate of him as one of the preeminent theorists/critics of aesthetics and film. This new collection includes Carroll's essays from the early 1970's to the present. (An interesting time period as it follows the birth of "serious" film criticism in the 70's to today's overabundance of theories and schools on film.) Carroll brings a careful and astute eye to the viewing of films, presenting what are quite often new and exciting ways of approaching individual films. In his foreword Tom Gunning writes, "Carroll has the gift of making films he dissects seem like discoveries, the result of a completely contemporary experience, regardless of their period in film history." What is most impressive about Carroll's work is his ability to provide compelling readings of both the "classic films" and avant-garde or less canonized works. In separate essays Carroll analyzes the techniques of Keaton and Chaplain, the imagery in King Kong, Orson Wells's editing in The Trial, and the work of Werner Herzog. He also writes on the racial and political implications of the films Nothing but a Man, and The Cool World and the works of experimental filmmakers Kenneth Anger, Harry Smith, Amy Taubin.